September 08, 2006
My Faith in Excel is shattered
Anyone who has known me for long enough knows that while I'm no fan of Microsoft I love Microsoft Excel. I've long believed it is the best written Microsoft product.
My faith in Excel just got smashed.
So I took a list of numbers from a CSV file that should add up to 0. (If you must know I'm mucking with a bill from a service provider thats all fucked up. They missed giving me the proper credit, so I'm detailing for them what the additional credits should be, so we should get to a zero sum.)
For those of you who want to check up on my the initial list is:
99.9
0
3.52
3.24
0.02
1.24
0.26
5.94
-0.23
-0.02
-2.87
-1.1
-3.12
-88.62
-5.27
-0.03
0
-0.37
-0.14
-0.4
-11.28
-0.67
So when I add this list up I get 0.00. Excel gets -0.00000000000001609823385706480. I even tried the other way round this and did two intermediate sums where I got 12.89 and -12.89, which Excel Adds up to -0.00000000000001598721155460230.
I can't figure out what the hell is going on, although I have checked every number to make sure there isn't a some rounded number being displayed with two digits.. So I'm stumped, and my faith is shattered.
if rounded to 30 decimal places you are correct. try 13 decimal places, and the result is .0000000000000. or so I may think it is ok.
Love,
Dad
I'm not sure really what is going on here but I bet it has something to do with the fact that you are trying this on a Mac. Just a hunch really....
Cliff for Governor Committee